Red Robin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, Inc. | |
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| Type | Public (NASDAQ: RRGB) |
| Founded | 1969 |
| Headquarters | Greenwood Village, Colorado |
| Industry | Restaurant |
| Products | Food |
| Website | Website |
- This article is about the restaurant chain. For the comic book character Red Robin see Jason Todd. For other uses, see the disambiguation page Robin.
Red Robin (NASDAQ: RRGB) is a chain of casual dining restaurants founded in 1969 in Seattle, Washington, USA, and now headquartered in Greenwood Village, Colorado. The chain is best known for its gourmet burgers and bottomless steak fries as well as its freckled lemonade.
The first Red Robin still stands at the corner of Furhman and Eastlake avenues E. in Seattle, at the southern end of the University Bridge. This building dates from 1940 and was first called Sam's Tavern. The owner, Sam, sang in a barber shop quartet and could frequently be heard singing, "When the red, red robin goes bob, bob, bobbin' along." (Henry Woods). He liked the song so much that he eventually changed the name to Sam's Red Robin.
They eventually dropped the "Sam" and simply became Red Robin. The first restaurant was 1,200 sq ft (110 m²). In 1973, the restaurant expanded their business to include their most well-known hamburgers including the Red Robin Bacon Cheeseburger and the Royal Red Robin Burger which has a fried egg on the patty. Local Seattle restaurant entrepreneur Gerry Kingen bought the restaurant and expanded it.
In 1979, Red Robin regulars, Mike and Steve Snyder, decided to open their own Red Robin in Yakima, Wash. The Snyder Group Company became Red Robin's first franchisee. In 1980, Red Robin was well on its way to becoming "America's Gourmet Burgers & Spirits" by opening a restaurant in Portland, Ore. In 1983, Red Robin adopted a mascot named Red. In 1985, the headquarters was moved from dowtown Seattle to suburban Colorado after Kingen sold a controlling interest in Red Robin Corp. to The Skylark Corporation of Japan. With marginal successes and poor financial performance under Skylark's management, Kingen, then a minority owner, in 1995 stepped back into the CEO position to nurse the company back to profitibility. In 1994, the company introduced its "Bottomless Steak Fries." In 2000, the company celebrated the opening of its 150th restaurant. As of February 2007, there are 307 locations across the United States and 18 in Canada.
